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Edward Joseph Collins: An American Composer
(continued)
BY ERIK ERIKSSON
The beginning of 1939 gives us a picture
of rare exuberance as Collins tells his paper confidant that:
“This will be my big year; the gods have told me so. This
time next year I shall be world famous and rich—the latter
not for myself but for those who love me. They will have money
and they will be happy, but I shall have the world at my feet
and shall be hailed as a genius.” The following day, however,
his family entertained a lady from Germany who was in fear of
the Gestapo but who was of mixed feelings on the Jewish question.
“She had many Jewish friends and many times during the last
year she has been ashamed to be a German.” But, on the other
hand, “when she spoke of Hitler the conqueror her eyes sparkled
and she betrayed herself as the German who is out to dominate
the world.”
14 January 1939 brought the completion of
his opera, Daughter of the South. With the work now behind
him, Collins turned his attention to a broadcast from the Metropolitan
Opera of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. His journal entry
reveals, “I was overwhelmed by the work. This is surely
Mozart’s masterpiece. It gathers momentum up to the final
scene where it probably transcends even Beethoven and Wagner in
dramatic power. How subdued we are in the presence of genius!
It become a miracle, a revelation and we are struck dumb. Criticism
is ridiculous.”
Over the next days and months, Collins’s
entries offer many pointed opinions. “The president is supposed
to be a smart man but I think he is stupid—or rather he
is probably a sick man. He may be a master of detail but he overlooks
the fundamentals.” “Roosevelt’s misguided humanitarianism
makes him the poor man’s misfortune.” “Johann
Sebastian Bach—first citizen of Germany. I wonder if the
German people realize how well he represents them, not only by
his musical genius but by his twenty children. The home life of
Bach is the thing that made Germany great and he is the real Germanicus.”
“I really believe that the jazz pianists
are better musicians than those who are giving their life blood
to master the classics. I know for instance that Eddy Duchin is
a better musician than Josef Lhevinne even though the later can
play a number of concerti quite flawlessly. If I had it to do
all over again I should keep up with the popular music and be
able to play all the well known tunes in any key.”
“My father-in-law’s birthday
[29 March 1939]. He is eighty today. There is something terrible
about eighty when the owner of the years is still alert and in
love with life as much as Mr. Mayer is.” “In the morning
I finished ‘Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel’ (the
other day I bought an amazing collection of spirituals and am
going to make piano pieces of them).”
Collins confided to his journal in a 27 May
1939 entry that, “Cedar Lake and Fish Creek are beautiful
to me not only on account of the fresh air but also because in
these places I am free to do the work I love and because I am
away from all the irritating distractions of Chicago.” He
continued by noting that, “Fish [sic] is a different climate—probably
ten degrees colder than Chicago and quite blustery. It is a place
where one might become very lonesome at night.”
“We came here to begin getting our
house ready for the summer. It is a new experience for me and
I don’t feel quite equal to it. This afternoon, for instance,
I talked to Mr. Gannett our caretaker about what is to be done;
during the next ten days I shall be busy talking to electricians,
plumbers, caretakers and all the people who make a house livable
after it has been empty for ten years.”
A July 8 journal entry from that first year
in his own home shows Collins to have been pleased by the final
results: “A more charming country house than ours is not
to be found on this earth. Sitting out in front of it now I am
looking over the tops of our two hundred cherry and apple trees
to the meadow beyond where hay has just been cut and raked into
little stacks.” He comments also that, “To the north
is our beautiful birch grove where by next year I shall have my
little log studio [it turned out to be fieldstone] with my piano
and stacks of manuscript paper—far enough away from the
house so that I shall not hear the radio or the noisy children.”
continued
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